Seasonal Effects
Noah Kahan’s slow-burning breakthrough ‘Stick Season’ has made him a contender for the best new artist Grammy
Noah Kahan is Zooming to us from the heart of Vermont’s stick season, where things are looking cloudy with a chance of multi-platinum. Now, if you happen to know what that “seasonal” reference actually is, you are probably a) an 80-year-old New Englander who grew up with that term, or b) one of the millions of people enraptured by the music of Kahan, who spent 2023 becoming a nearly stealth superstar.
Kahan has many accomplishments to his name now — a Grammy nomination for best new artist, a first-time “Saturday Night Live” appearance and a summer tour next year that has already sold-out venues from Fenway Park to the Hollywood Bowl. One of them is alerting the world to the fact that “Stick Season,” the title of his breakthrough third album from 2022, refers to the fairly forlorn time of year in New England between the leaves falling off the trees and the onset of snow. And the album bearing that name has so entranced a swatch of America that it would not be surprising to see New England tourism boards using it as a selling point: Come, experience the late-autumnal barrenness that inspired a blockbuster!
“If you know anything about Vermonters, I think they will fucking hate that,” laughs Kahan, standing on his front porch, taking a break from moving some boxes between houses, hours before he must drive down to New York for “SNL.” “It’s funny, because Vermont needs more people to live there, but there’s also a part of the pride of being from the state that’s like, ‘Don’t come here. This is our place.’ So I try not to step on toes in that way and exploit anything, but I have been hearing more people use the term ‘stick season,’ and as a Vermonter, that does make me proud.”
Kahan has been one of the biggest success stories of the year for Variety’s Hitmakers label of 2023, Republic. But he’s not exactly the most representative guy on the roster. If you’re wondering when Republic got in the business of signing acoustic-guitar-strumming, neo-folkie singer-songwriters that they could turn into chartbusters and arena acts, well, they didn’t. Kahan was going for something a little closer to the contemporary pop mold with the two full-length albums he made for the company prior to
“Stick Season,” but then he had his own change of musical season, turning more toward influences ranging from Cat Stevens to Mumford & Sons and making music that sounded more like his beard looks. Ironically, eschewing pop was what finally made him a pop superstar.
“There certainly was never the scary tale of the label saying, ‘No, you are this person’,” he says. “They’ve always been supportive of the song, whatever the song was for me. I think there was definitely some … I don’t know if concern is the right word, but there were definitely questions about what I was trying to do, and I think on my end there was some lack of clarity, with a lot of it being like, ‘Trust me, I need to make this project,’ and continuing to show them what was happening as it was being made. It definitely took a shift of thinking for my management and label to be like, ‘OK, we’re trying to approach the folk base a little bit more,’ and strategizing change with that direction, but they were really supportive and always willing to hear me out. And when they were accepting of what I wanted to do, they started to allocate amazing marketing and resources and connections to kind of help me get into the space.
So it wasn’t much of a battle, but it definitely took some questioning and some strategizing.”
For Record Store Day’s Black Friday rollout of exclusive releases, the toughest limited-edition title to find didn’t turn out to be an Olivia Rodrigo EP, as expected (although that one sold just fine). It was Kahan’s re-release of a rare 2020 EP, “Cape Elizabeth,” that he produced on his own during the pandemic as a no-pressure acoustic side project between his first and second pop albums. No wonder fans treasure that release, as he does: It’s the record where, with no expectations, he found his real voice, one he came back to a couple of years later. “I made it with my neighbor, and we worked on it for a week and didn’t really promote it too much,” Kahan says. “It kind of became ‘Stick Season’ before ‘Stick Season,’ in a lot of ways. It gave me the confidence to be like, all right, there is this niche, specific storytelling stuff that can actually connect with people in a more universal way. I really owe it all to that EP, and it’s still probably my favorite work I’ve made.”
In 2022, the latest release took off in a big enough way to suggest a phenomenon was afoot. It went into turbo-charged mode when he was convinced to record still more songs for a deluxe edition that came out last summer. One of them added labelmate Post Malone as a duet partner on “Dial Drunk.” “I remember the night it came out, my name was trending on Twitter,” Kahan says, “and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is my worst fucking nightmare.’” Or his best — take your pick. Soon it felt like half of young America was foregoing bops to aspire to feeling cheerfully gloomy, or gloomily cheerful, in the wide-open spaces between small towns in New England like Kahan’s native Strafford, Vt., population 1,094.
“It’s been really cool to see people in places that are far away from New England resonate with these ideas,” Kahan says. “You know, I lived in New York and felt lonelier than I ever did in Strafford. There is loneliness and isolation, and nostalgic, homesick longing, everywhere you go — and also regional pride. We’re all from somewhere, and I think it’s nice to get a chance to be proud of that and to examine what makes the place you’re from great and also not so great. What’s been nice has been being able to reflect on my hometown and to watch other people reflect on where they’re from as well, whether they still live there or not. There’s some cultural examination that happens when you can see something and say, ‘That’s so northern New England.’ And I hope that people can find in these songs what I found in the space itself.
“What I love about where I grew up is that the lack of real things to do besides be outside and to think about the woods lent imagination to me, and a sense of wondering about why things are the way they are,” he continues. “I kind of didn’t have that external stimulus to distract me from deeper thoughts.”
Post Malone isn’t the only non-new Englander Kahan has brought along on his journey. He’s embarked on a series of remakes of the songs from “Stick Season” with other duet guests, like Hozier, Kacey Musgraves and even a best new artist competitor, Gracie Abrams, with whom he’s struck up a strong friendship.
His Spotify Wrapped artist profile shows just how far he’s come. On his social media, Kahan posted a shot of the Spotify image showing his 4 billion streams on the app in 2023, with a caption: “Seasonal affective disorder and its consequences.” So he’s proud he’s become a primary coping mechanism for the colder season … everyone’s boy of non-summer? Yes, but he has another helpful hint: “People need to get some vitamin D lamps, dude.”
It’s been really cool to see people in places that are far away from New England resonate with these ideas. ” — Noah Kahan